A friend of presidents, industrialists, and statesmen… A sailor whose career began on coal fired steamships but went on to witness the surrender of Japan following the use of the first atomic bomb… A pilot who became the first man to fly over the North and South Poles, and an admiral who charted a landmass fully half the size of the United States itself… Admiral Richard E. Byrd was one of the world’s last great explorers.
USS-Holland, generally recognized as the first modern submarine to be adopted by a major Navy, was a forerunner of the technology that is still central to naval warfare today. But its designer, John Philip Holland, would be nearly forgotten.